Special Economic Zones in the Indonesia–Malaysia–Thailand Growth Triangle: Opportunities for Collaboration

By Asian Development Bank

This publication explains why Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand need to ramp up cooperation to boost their special economic zones (SEZ) and spur sustainable growth. Mapping out and assessing the economic performance of SEZs across the subregion, it highlights the threats they face from factors including growing competition for foreign investment, international trade disputes, and the rise of digital technologies. The publication stresses the need for policymakers and stakeholders to intensify their strategic collaboration in order to make their SEZs more competitive. Against the backdrop of COVID-19, it details a range of practical steps designed to increase trade, create jobs, and build economic resilience across the three countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9789292691523

Book preview

Introduction

Background

Since its inception in 1993, the Indonesia–Malaysia–Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) subregional program has attained remarkable economic growth and shared regional prosperity through concerted policy interventions. Yet, there is a mismatch between the actual achievements and declared objectives. The midterm review of the IMT-GT Implementation Blueprint 2012–2016 observes that the gains in terms of intra-subregional trade and investment are particularly modest, suggesting the limited success of the member states in leveraging on their comparative advantages to make it a well-positioned regional production base (Asian Development Bank [ADB] 2015). To address this gap, the IMT-GT Vision 2036 (Centre for IMT-GT Subregional Cooperation [CIMT] 2017a) supported by the IMT-GT Implementation Blueprint 2017–2021 (CIMT 2017b) adopts the spatial approach that accords a high priority to the development of regional and cross-border production networks in the IMT-GT areas using special economic zones (SEZs), special border economic zones (SBEZs), and other production sites as the key tools. The IMT-GT Vision 2036 places the five priority IMT-GT economic corridors at the center to facilitate cross-border connectivity of these production sites backward with resources and forward with markets and maximize the economic network externalities. The objective is to foster diversification and sophistication of manufacturing, agribusiness, and tourism chains for an integrated, innovative, inclusive and sustainable subregion by 2036 (CIMT 2017a, 43). However, very little is known about whether and how economic corridors are being leveraged for setting up SEZs, SBEZs, and other production hubs and how successful they have been in generating network externalities in the subregion through regional cooperation. Bearing this in mind, ADB, a regional development partner to IMT-GT since 2006, has conducted this study on a collaborative approach to SEZ development in the IMT-GT subregion at the request of the member states under the technical assistance project titled Enhancing Effectiveness of Subregional Programs to Advance Regional Cooperation and Integration in Southeast Asia.

The study’s main objectives are to take stock of the IMT-GT SEZs and other economic zones, review the extent to which these are integrated into national development agendas of the member states, review their performance, identify challenges, and offer recommendations for policy makers to support their active clustering and specialization efforts in the subregion. One of the study’s objectives is to map the universe of SEZs and other industrial zones in a comparative framework to harmonize the data on economic zones in the three member countries. Harmonization of data means transforming the data of varying zone types and naming conventions into one cohesive data set by developing a framework for zone typology. To my best knowledge, no earlier studies have assessed the implementation of the subregional agenda from the perspective of economic zones and/or attempted to harmonize the regional economic zone data. This study is the first to address this gap. The study makes three major contributions to the existing literature on economic zones, particularly SEZs. First, it harmonizes the data on economic zones in the IMT-GT member countries. Second, it develops a framework to assess the mainstreaming of the subregional agenda into national and subnational development agendas and proposes a strategy to implement it successfully. Third and most important, it proposes a strategic framework for the success of economic zones in the subregion. While doing so, it underlines the relevance of the collaborative approach for the subregional economic zones and highlights how the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the need for the collaborative approach to economic zones. Typically, economic zones are set up as a competitive tool to attract investment and generate employment. However, this study identifies the transborder subregion with a hybrid zone and proposes a coopetition (a combination of collaboration and competition) strategy to improve the attractiveness of the subregional economic zones.

Objectives and Scope

The study sets out the following specific objectives:

mapping the economic zones in the IMT-GT countries;

mapping the economic zones on IMT-GT economic corridor routes;

reviewing the national and subnational development policies. and strategies including incentives, regulations, institutions, and governance relating to the IMT-GT economic zones;

assessing the alignment between the national development agenda on the one hand, and the IMT-GT economic corridor and zone development approaches on the other;

appraising the subregional economic performance to gauge the success of economic zones; and

identifying the challenges and offering recommendations for actions and mechanisms to deepen economic zone development and cross-border cooperation in the IMT-GT subregion.

The study’s ultimate objective is to strengthen the strategic relevance of economic zones in the subregional initiative and identify actions for promoting them.

While the study proposal was designed to cover only SEZs and SBEZs, all other economic zones have been included in the study for three reasons. First, there has been a proliferation not only of SEZs but also of other economic zones in the region; any study based only on SEZs would, therefore, present a partial view of trade and investment activity along the economic corridors. Second, the distinction between SEZs and other economic zones is becoming blurred, with many of the advantages of SEZs also being offered in other economic zones. Third, the ultimate goal of the zones, irrespective of the type, is to promote industrial clustering and production networks, one of the planks on which the Vision 2036 strategic framework is